Rainbows in the Clouds of Troy Davis: Student Activism at Howard, Morehouse, Spelman and Clark Atlanta

Written By: Crystal A. deGregory, PhD
Instructor, Tennessee State University

Photos By: Sekaya Harris
Sekular Images

Earlier this week, I had the privilege of witnessing poet, historian and activist Dr. Maya Angelou, whom I call “Mother Maya”—although she doesn’t know me from Adam—captivate an audience of a few hundred people with her voice. Flanked by two men, both substantial in size, Mother Maya was making her way to a caquetoire or conversation chair when suddenly her voice rang out in song: “When it looked like the sun wasn’t gonna’ shine anymore, God put a rainbow in the clouds!”  We sat transfixed under her spell for sixty minutes as she related the story of her life, a story of two communities (one a big city; the other a small Southern enclave at the end of a dusty road). Hers is a story of the misery of childhood rape and self-imposed silence as well as one of the solace found in written words and in the love of a grandma’s hands.

Her wisdom, wit and womanhood was obvious to even those in the rafter seats. She talked. We listened. She laughed. We laughed too. And just as we’d grown accustomed to the warmth of her presence she bade us farewell with the command “Be a rainbow in someone else’s cloud.”

Just two days later, on September 21, as coeds all over the nation sat in college classrooms, hundreds of Historically Black College and University (HBCU) students took up the mantle of social activism. It is a mantle one should know well, especially when your predecessors’ names—names like Mordecai Wyatt Johnson, James Mercer Langston, Thurgood Marshall, John Hope, Benjamin Mays, Martin Luther King, Jr., Howard Zinn, Marian Wright Edelman, Alice Walker, Ruby Doris Smith Robinson, Ralph Abernathy, Marva Collins and James Weldon Johnson—have been synonymous with transformative changes in America for more than a century.

In Washington, D.C., with fists raised and heads unbowed, tens of Howard University students lined the fence of the White House united in protest against the execution of Georgia death-row inmate Troy Anthony Davis, convicted of the 1989 killing an off-duty police officer. In doing so, they joined the ranks of President Jimmy Carter and Pope Benedict, Nobel laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who along with thousands of Davis’ supporters worldwide also opposed his execution. Before the day’s end, twelve Howard students and one professor were arrested for their nonviolent sit-in protest.

Hundreds of miles away in Atlanta, Georgia, more than 200 students from Morehouse, Spelman and Clark Atlanta universities boarded buses bound for the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification prison in Jackson, Georgia where Davis was scheduled to be executed at 7:00 p.m. EST. While Davis’ life hung in the balance for four additional hours, the United States Supreme Court’s one-sentence refusal to grant him a stay resigned him to death by lethal injection at 11:08 p.m.

While it is easy view the execution as evidence of failure of activists to stop it, I’m reminded of Mother Maya’s challenge to be a rainbow in someone else’s cloud. As activists, these HBCUs students accepted that challenge. They were rainbows in Troy Davis’ cloud. I hope that these young HBCU activists are reminded of this fact today. Just as the thousands upon thousands of HBCU activists before them, they now know the joys and sorrows of standing up for that which they believe.

After all, Mother Maya never said there wouldn’t be rain.

She did however, say:  “Courage is the most important of all the virtues, because without courage you can’t practice any other virtue consistently. You can practice any virtue erratically, but nothing consistently without courage.”

Continue to be courageous young HBCUers!